InterContinental Hotels were infiltrated by malware

InterContinental Hotels Group revealed that in 2016, online servers of at least 12 of its hotel, restaurants and bars were infiltrated by malware. The investigation is still in process to find out the other affected locations as well.

The company said that the investigation clearly shows malware was installed on servers that processed payment cards. The cards which were used at the front desk were not affected at 12 IHG managed hotels and restaurants. The malware searched for track data i.e. cardholder name, card number, expiration date and internal verification code. This data was read from the magnetic stripe of a payment card as it was being routed through the affected server.

The malware was active from August to December of 2016 as per the British company. Hotels in many other locations like Washington D.C., Florida, Illinois, Georgia, California were also affected.

The headquarters of InterContinental Hotels Group is in Denham, Buckinghamshire. This group owns the chains like Holiday Inn, Candlewood Suites, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn Express, Hotel Indigo, InterContinental, Staybridge and Holiday Inn Club Vacation.

The company gave assurance that IHG is working with the security firms to review IHG’s security measures and also confirmed that the issue has been remediated. Apart from this, IGH has notified law enforcement and is working with the payment card networks to improve the monitoring of affected cards.